Showing titles in Educators

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s experience begins the night he has chosen to embark on a four-year wandering retreat, slipping past the monastery gates. Alone for the first time in his life, he sets out into the unknown. His initial motivation is to step away from his life of privilege and to explore the deepest, most hidden aspects of his being, but what he discovers throughout his retreat - about himself and about the world around us - comes to define his meditation practice and teaching.

At 22, Dan Brown came to the Bronx's P.S. 85 as an eager, fresh-faced teacher. Unbeknownst to him, his assigned class, 4-217, was the designated "dumping ground" for all fourth-grade problem cases, and his students would prove to be more challenging than he could ever anticipate. Intent on being a caring, dedicated teacher but confronted with unruly children, absent parents, and a failing administration, Dan was pushed to the limit time and again: he found himself screaming with rage, punching his fist through a blackboard out of sheer frustration, often just wanting to give up and walk away.

Maybe it was a grandparent or a teacher or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching and gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly 20 years ago. Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you?

So this audiobook is for all the defaults out there – bored out of their eyeballs or so overwhelmed they could scream expletives into the wind for a solid hour – to know their invisible labour is seen, valued, and can even sometimes be rebalanced. With heartfelt and hilarious advice, Lou Beckett provides much-needed comfort and community for the one who is depended on the most (and often feels appreciated the least), and maybe – just maybe – how we can begin to muddle through a little better, together.

As the middle of five kids growing up in dire poverty, the odds were low on Katriona O'Sullivan making anything of her life. She became a mother at 15 and ended up homeless. Five rackety years followed - barely coping, drinking to escape - until Katriona, now living in her father's native Dublin, hit rock bottom. Poor is the extraordinary story - moving, funny, brave, and sometimes startling - of how Katriona turned her life around.

Vince Copley was born on a government mission into poverty in 1936. By the time he was 15, five of his family had died. But at a home for Aboriginal boys, he befriended future leaders Charlie Perkins, John Moriarty and Gordon Briscoe. They were friendships that would last a lifetime. 'Always remember you're as good as anybody else,' his mother, Kate, often told him. And he was, a champion footballer and premiership-winning coach. But change was in the air, and Copley knew he had more to contribute. In The Wonder of Little Things, Copley tells his story.

As a historian Asa Briggs was a pioneer, who ventured into previously unexplored areas of study: labour history, urban history, local history, northern history, the history of cities, the history of the book, the history of communications, and so on. He seemed interested in everything; no detail was too trivial, no subject tedious; they were all “fascinating”. His main field of study was Victorian history, a field which he helped to establish and cultivate. This is his life story, told for the first time.

How could a 66-year-old grandmother, who gave her life to helping people with their health, become the subject of a malicious smear campaign which resulted in her being classified as a serious threat to public health in Australia? This book exposes the hypocrisy of the organization Friends of Science in Medicine who act as 'friends of science', but are in reality pharmaceutical apologists and the 'Enemies of Truth in Medical Science'. Barbara became collateral damage in the war on any dissent from mainstream medical dogma.

Over her twenty-five-year career, English teacher Carol Atherton has taught generations of students texts that will be familiar to many of us from our own schooldays. But while the staples of exam syllabuses and reading lists remain largely unchanged, their significance – and their relevance - evolves with each class as they encounter them for the first time. Each chapter of Reading Lessons invites us to take a fresh look at these novels, plays and poems, revealing how they have shaped our beliefs, our values, and how we interact as a society.

Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields - except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST).

After 20 years in the trenches of public education, J.K. Lynch delivers a heartfelt, hilarious, and unfiltered look into life behind the teacher’s desk. The Road to Harris High is not your typical educational memoir—it’s a collection of real stories told with wit, warmth, and unapologetic candor. From unruly students to unexpected life lessons, Lynch’s anecdotes capture the chaotic beauty of teaching and the unshakeable spirit of educators who show up every day, no matter what.

The Criminal Class is based on the true-life experiences of an everyday teacher who makes the precarious career transition to an Education Officer in the prison system. Dealing with both the law enforcers and the law breakers, but not bound by any normal allegiances, he finds himself having to thread the rocky path of an outsider on the inside.

Brendan James Murray has been a secondary school teacher for more than 10 years. In that time, he has seen hundreds of kids move through his classes - troubled, brilliant, funny, passionate, struggling: every single one brings unique qualities or circumstances into school with them, every day. In this astonishing powerful portrait of a single school year, Brendan James Murray shows the ups and downs of school for teachers and students.

Finding Happy is for young adults starting their adult journey, and for those well into theirs who have not yet sighted land. It is written by a master storyteller who learned to scale walls and blew them up rather than be stopped, and who learned in the process that our happiness flows from leaving the world a better place than we found it. Ultimately, it's about how best to channel this glorious life we are each privileged to enjoy and to make it truly happy.

A dramatic and remarkable narrative of an extraordinary teacher's determination, from the author of the Sunday Times bestsellers The Tiger's Child and One Child. Torey Hayden faced six emotionally troubled kids no other teacher could handle - three recent arrivals from battle-torn Northern Ireland, badly traumatized by the horrors of war; an eleven-year-old boy, who only knew life inside an institution; an excitable girl, aggressive and sexually precocious at the age of eight; and seven-year-old Leslie, perhaps the most hopeless of all, unresponsive and unable to speak.

Here is the gritty, powerful story of Thomas Sowell's life-long education in the school of hard knocks, a journey that took him from Harlem to the Marines, the Ivy League, and a career as a controversial writer, teacher, and economist in government and private industry. It is also the story of the dramatically changing times in which this personal odyssey took place.

In The Assistant Principal 50, award-winning, four-time principal Baruti Kafele presents reflective questions that encompass the breadth and depth of the assistant principalship—from finding your leadership lane to thriving and being an asset to your principal.

Adults often find it difficult to communicate with autistic students and try to “fix” them. But what if we found a way to help these kids use their natural gifts to convey their thoughts and feelings? What if the traditional structure of language prevents them from communicating the full depth of their experiences? What if the most effective and most immediate way for people on the spectrum to express themselves is through verse, which mirrors their sensory-rich experiences and patterned thoughts?

This is not a traditional biography with a chronological enumeration of dates and places and events, because my husband’s life was not a traditional existence. His every thought and action was part of a larger whole - a profound knowledge of the universe that Philip Berg, who later became known as the Rav, acquired and then imparted. I include here events that are representative of his passion and purpose - events that also shaped my own journey, our tumultuous marriage, and the creation of the worldwide network known as the Kabbalah Center.

In The Power of a Plant, globally acclaimed teacher and self-proclaimed CEO (Chief Eternal Optimist) Stephen Ritz shows you how, in one of the nation's poorest communities, his students thrive in school and in life by growing, cooking, eating, and sharing the bounty of their green classroom.